Stream It Or Skip It: ‘GG Precinct’ On Netflix, A Comedic Taiwanese Cop Show Where The Detectives Investigate Idiom-Related Murders

The harder shows try to be funny, the less funny they are. That’s not a piece of shocking news, but sometimes swinging and missing with the funny stuff isn’t a fatal blow for a series if there is a plotline that makes up for the unfunny “funny” stuff. A new series from Taiwan, which is a sequel to a film with many of the same characters, is an example of this.

GG PRECINCT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A security guard walks around a mostly-dark parking garage, jingling his keys; a faint fluorescent light flickers.

The Gist: A hooded figure seemingly disappears and reappears in the garage, and when the guard goes to the lounge to watch a video, the figure pops up and kills the guard. We see blood splatter on the fish tank in the lounge.

Wu Ming-han (Greg Hsu) is speeding back to his first day returning to his job as a police detective in New Taipei’s Gia Gun Precinct. He’s fully recovered from a gunshot wound he suffered on a case involving a crime boss, and he walks back into the GG District triumphant. It’s also a happy day for Chang Yung-kang (Ma Nien-hsien), the squad’s former captain, who’s been promoted to district chief.

To Wu’s dismay, though, Chang offers the vacated captain’s slot to Lin Tzu-ching (Gingle Wang), who was undercover as a cartel mole but who brought the cartel’s money back to the GG District station as Wu was bleeding from his gunshot wound. Chang’s rationale is that Lin “risked her life” to go undercover. “But I was shot!” replied Wu. “That’s no big deal,” says Chang.

When the guard’s body is discovered, Wu goes to the scene with fellow detectives Chubby (Flower Chen) and Shao-nien (Ng Ki-pin) and profiler Li Shu-fen (Lulu Huang). They discover the guard’s body is covered with feathers and fish scales, and he’s wearing foam moose horns.

Back at the office, as they examine the evidence with the stuttering medical examiner (Da-her Lin), Chang sees the scales, feathers and horns and recalls the Idiom Murders, where a Chinese professor killed two students and set up the bodies to show the idiom that they kept getting wrong.

After a second body is found, with all its teeth pulled out, Lin and Wu go to the prison to talk to the Chinese Idiom Killer (Tai Chih-yuan), who is bound up and masked like Hannibal Lecter. While the figured out the idiom being displayed with the first victim, the Idiom Killer tells them what they were missing with the second, and assures the cops that the copycat will kill again.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? GG Precinct is kinda-sorta like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, only with a season-long serial-killer arc added in. The series is also the sequel to the movie Marry My Dead Body.

Our Take: The funny moments in GG Precinct generally come from how widely-drawn the characters are. Wu is arrogant and refuses to take Wu’s lead. Chang is a genial goof who seems to think everything can be solved with a good cup of tea. Chubby likes to eat. Shao-nien hasn’t shaken his undercover assignment, including the associated ketamine addiction. And Li seems to profile everyone using the Myers-Briggs personality matrix.

The broad characterizations are what they are, and in the first episode, don’t generate much in the way of laughs or interest. However, the copycat Idiom Killer case is definitely interesting, and certainly a case we’ve never seen before on a show. That’s where comedic cop series really shine; they find ways to kill people that are utterly bonkers, and send the detectives in weird directions as they investigate these bonkers murders.

Just the idea that someone kills people based on Chinese idioms is by itself funny. And it’s also funny that Wu and the other officers aren’t all that well versed in traditional Chinese. If we were to guess — we’re not linguists by a longshot — the “Chinese” being referred to is Cantonese (please feel free to correct us on this), and the fact that Wu and the others struggle to figure out the idioms because their Chinese is lacking is part of what makes this case crazy.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As the Idiom Killer predicted, there are more victims, as we see the third victim’s body being made into an idiom.

Sleeper Star: We liked Tai Chih-yuan as the Chinese Idiom Killer, because he doesn’t just do a Hannibal Lecter impression, despite being dressed like him. We also like the fact that the breathing noises he makes sound like Darth Vader’s repirator.

Most Pilot-y Line: Why make Chubby’s “thing” is that he gets three breakfasts at work?

Our Call: STREAM IT. While GG Precinct isn’t gut-grabbing hilarious, its broad characters, paired with the weird, supernatural-adjacent mystery the detectives have to solve, make for an entertaining show.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.